


missed connection - m4m - printer’s workshop, the Marais

by hellabaloo



Category: Paris je t'aime (2006)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8879020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellabaloo/pseuds/hellabaloo
Summary: You were the cute French guy speaking to me and I was the printer’s apprentice rolling a cigarette. Truth is, my French isn’t that good and I have no idea what you were saying to me, but now I’m trying to find you.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musicforwolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforwolves/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
>  **Additional Content Notes:** There’s one instance of a homophobic slur (in a memory) in the first section.

.

 

Elie looks right, then left, but can't see Marianne or her assistant. Shit. He doesn't even know the guy's name and he's willing to go tearing through the Marais. He has no idea what he's doing, but Elie decides to go right and tosses his plain, blue worker’s coat inside the print shop before breaking into a run. 

Why the fuck not.

He's already making a fool of himself, might as well commit.

He can't help but think of the guy's bangs—how they fell into his eyes and he would casually swipe them away with a nonchalant shake of his head. It makes the sides of his neck heat up just thinking about it. God, he's so fucked over a guy who he didn't even know existed half an hour ago. Elie hasn't a had the first flutterings of a crush like this, with anxious butterflies in his stomach and sweaty palms he's balled up into fists to ignore how they're shaking, since eighth grade and he thought he was in love with Ed Jacobson.

Elie comes to an intersection and pauses to look down the streets. Turning back, he has a visceral memory of telling Ed how he felt and getting pushed into the asphalt of the blacktop for his confession. His scraped palms had scabs that reminded him for a week of how, “Faggot!” echoed across the schoolyard. Elie digs his fingernails into his palms and waits for a car to pass before crossing the street, ignoring the do not walk sign and car horns, and turning left forcing himself out of his memory.

He keeps running, past Place des Vosges, trying and failing to pull in a deep breath and he has to stop. Elie doubles over and coughs violently. His heart is racing a mile a minute and it feels like he can't take in air fast enough.

Fuck, he's out of shape. And the cigarettes probably aren't helping.

Elie takes another look around. He's gone further from the print shop than he ever has before, when it’s not straight to his Metro stop and he’s not totally sure where the hell he is. He can't see anyone that even looks like Marianne or her assistant. He was carrying a bike helmet, he probably rode off straight away on a scooter. But no way in hell a woman like Marianne would get on the back of a bike. Maybe they took the metro, but then he should have turned right at the light instead of left. But she's an artist and a gallery owner, she probably drove them both and then there's really no hope.

He can see the Bastille column in the distance, and people jostle past Elie as he stands still in the middle of sidewalk. Elie heaves a sigh and jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His fingers brush against the edge of a piece of paper that he pulls out.

It's the phone number the guy gave him. He feels for his phone and remembers he left in such a hurry it's still with his bag at the shop.

Elie walks slowly back to the printshop, retracing his steps, while trying to remember to enjoy the sunset. He is in Paris, after all.

The printer has finally stopped it's run and the shop is eerily quiet. There's a beam of light coming through the upper windows and it's making the faded yellow walls almost glow.

Christian comes out from the back, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Well, did you find them?”

There's such a difference between when Christian speaks French to him—clear, deliberate, maybe even a touch slow—and the sort of French that guy was speaking—the kind that feels like it slowly surrounds Elie to point where he couldn't pay attention to anything but the shape of his lips forming those silky, beautiful words.

“No.” Elie looks down at the guy's number. It's not like he has no chance of finding him again. But it makes something in chest tight to think of never seeing him again. Or actually talking with him when he can

“Ah. Well. You have his number,” Christian says, nodding the piece of paper between Elie's fingers. “You should call him.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Elie wants to, he really does. But the thought of trying to speak his stuttering French across a phone line makes his chest uncomfortably tight.

“I'll do it later.”

 

.

 

Elie smooths out the little slip of paper with Gaspard's number hastily printed on the table top. The pencil is starting to smudge a bit. He had spent a day thinking of how to casually ask Christian for Gaspard's name, and in the end he didn't even need to. He asked Elie how the project was going and if he’d needed to consult with Gaspard on where to source extra auto paint, but Elie didn’t recognize the name and could only make a confused face. Christian laughed at his expression like usual and explained Gaspard had been the guy that had come in with Marianne and then Elie put the name and the face together. 

He glances at the note as he rolls a cigarette after finishing his lunch. The edges are worn from being in his pocket the last week and creased along where he folded and refolded it taking it out of his pocket and putting it back. 

“Have you called him yet?”

Elie looks up at Christian, who’s rumbling around their kitchenette reheating the leftover his wife packed for his lunch, and takes the unlit cigarette from his mouth. He can’t find a light, anyway; he’s always losing the little matchbooks he picks up from bars and puts the cigarette away for later. 

“No. But I'm going to today.”

He even sounds like he means it. And he does, except every time Elie’s taken out his phone to call Gaspard he finds an excuse to do something, _anything_ else. His shoebox apartment has never been cleaner and he’s even managed to go the laundromat this week.

“About time. A week later he's probably not going to remember who you are.”

Elie snaps his head up to look at Christian.

“I'm joking, Elie,” he says with a gentle smile.

“Oh,” Elie says. He nods like he believes him, but his heart is pounding at the suggestion.

Elie grabs his phone, the piece of paper, and heads to the back of the print shop. There’s a supply closet he knows he won’t be disturbed in because he’s the only that ever comes in to replenish the ink for the printing machines. Elie paces for a moment before stopping himself.

_Fuck it._

He punches in the numbers more forcefully than even his old Nokia can probably handle and before he can think better of it, hits send.

Elie tries to breathe in time with the sound of the line ringing, but it doesn’t help steady his heartbeat that feels like it’s going to beat right out of his chest. 

All of a sudden there’s a voice on the line.

“Bonjour—” Elie says, but the voice keeps going and suddenly he recognizes the phone number he just dialled being repeated back to him. It’s a voicemail.

Unthinking, Elie hangs up.

“Shit,” he says to the quiet.

He breathes in through his nose and holds it while he counts to ten. It comes out like a cross between a groan and wimper. He’s glad no one’s around to have heard it.

Elie dials the number again and hopes he gets the voicemail again. After five rings, the voicemail recording comes on again and he takes a deep breath before waiting for the inevitable beep. There’s a moment of silence and Elie worries he missed it, but then it chimes loudly in his ear.

“Bonjour,” Elie begins, conscious of how his accent must sound over the phone. “C’est Elie. De L’Imprimerie du Marais. Nous avons parlé il y a une semaine...quand vous êtes venu avec Marianne pour consulter d’une pièce. Mon numero de telephone c’est 01 42...72...10...56.”

Elie hangs up and tries to convince himself he did in fact recite his phone number correctly. Even if he sounded like it forgot half of it. And left enough identifiable information that Gaspard will remember who he is. He doesn’t answer when Christian asks why he’s so red and gets to sorting the letters for the letterpress, trying to forget about the phone in his pocket.

His phone doesn’t ring again for the rest of the day. 

Or the next day. 

The day after that Christian sends him a text message to let him know he’ll be running late the next morning—they do better over text, when Elie can take the time to read the French and reply in kind—and when it chimes Elie flings himself across his bed to get at his phone where it’s connected to wall, charging, hitting his elbow on the side of his nightstand. 

Once his funny bone stops aching, Elie can only laugh at himself. 

Maybe he needs to try some other way to talk to Gaspard.

 

.

 

“Elie?” Christian asks, raising his voice from the front of the shop to be heard over the running printing machine.

“Oui?” Elie says, stepping out from behind a stack of orders waiting to be processed. He’s been trying to respond more in French. It gets a wide smile out of Christian.

“I have a job for you,” he says, handing Elie a heavy box wrapped in unmarked paper. “This is Marianne’s order. 75 prints. I want you to personally deliver it to her. She’s a client that merits a housecall.”

“Okay.”

“Here’s her address and fifty euros for a taxi. It’s waiting outside. I wouldn’t want you to lug that around the Metro. And when you’re done, just head home for the night.”

“Okay.”

“And who knows,” Christian says with a sly smile, “maybe you’ll get to meet your mystery man again.”

Elie flushes and ducks his head. “Maybe,” he says, quietly.

It’s been a week, and still Gaspard hasn’t responded to Elie’s call. Jean-Yves, his co-worker, had spent most of Tuesday’s lunch hour coming up with increasingly implausible reasons why Gaspard hadn’t called him back yet. Nathalie, his other colleague and frequent companion during smoke-breaks, just rolled her eyes and assured him he probably just hadn’t topped up his mobile credits. 

Christian claps him on the shoulder and smiles. Elie tries to return it, but he’s not sure he manages more than grimace. He grabs his things and leaves the print shop, the box awkwardly tucked under his arm, and climbs into the back of the taxi. As Paris zooms past the window, Elie tries to tamp down the growing knot in his stomach.

Marianne’s apartment is almost the perfect cliche of an artist’s living space cum studio. She has the top floor of a recently renovated building with huge windows and no walls to separate rooms from each other. And everywhere there are supplies or half-finished pieces of art. As she gestures for Elie to leave his shoes and come in, he spots a glass dish with keys, coins, and tubes of paint. 

“Christian wanted to be sure these got to you as soon as we finished with them,” Elie says in English laying the box carefully on a large table where Marianne’s cleared some space.

“Oh! You’re American, are you? I would never have thought,” Marianne exclaims with a smile. "I assumed you were one of those fashionable, brooding young Frenchman that doesn’t speak much. But let’s take a look at these—” 

Marianne coos at the prints as she removes one from the box and inspects it, a constant stream of comments Elie’s not sure are directed at him or the print.

He’s not sure he should interrupt Marianne’s running monologue, but after a few moments of near silence he says, “I’m trying to be better, but my French isn’t that great.”

Marianne straightens and says, “Honestly that’s why I’ve hired Gaspard. I’m an awful ex-patriate, you see. Love living in France, have no capacity for the language whatsoever. The poor baker on the corner has to parse my request for une baguette s’il vous plaît.”

Elie hopes his voice isn’t affected by the jump his heart made into his throat at the mention of Gaspard. He is so royally fucked.

“Gaspard gave me his phone number,” Elie says, trying for casual, “and I called him but I never heard back—”

“Oh, yes! You wouldn’t have, I’m afraid, his phone completely died this past week. It’s been terribly inconvenient not being able to reach him. I can give you his email, if you’d like, I know he checks it somewhat frequently.”

“That would be great, actually.”

“Just a tick, let me find something to write on,” Marianne says, pulling a pen out of her hair, and rummaging in a drawer before pulling out an old envelope with a victorious exclamation. She scribbles down an email and hands it to Elie.

“Thank you.”

“You know, I’ve never seen Gaspard so enchanted by anyone before. He spent the whole afternoon after we came back from Christian’s shop in a daze, talking about blue eyes and soulmates,” Marianne says with a twinkle in her eye that reminded Elie of Christian’s gentle teasing.

“Soulmates?” Elie murmured, something in his chest constricting at the thought. 

Marianne hummed her assent. “Well, thank you very much for delivering my prints. Christian does excellent work.”

Elie leaves Marianne’s apartment and decides to take the long way back to his apartment, thinking of two halves trying to find each other in the world. 

It’s romantic, and feels very fitting for the image of Paris, but Elie’s not sure he buys it.

Except, says the small voice in the back of his mind, he’s had one conversation with Gaspard, and one conversation he didn’t understand most of what was said at that, and still he’s willing to chase this guy across Paris. 

Maybe there’s something to this soulmates idea.

 

.

 

The blinking cursor is mocking him. 

It’s just there, pretending like it’s just another email, when Elie’s eyes dart to the recipient email address and fucking _knows_ it’s not.

Soulmates, what a stupid idea.

But every time Elie so much as thinks of Gaspard, his stupid hair and how intently he looked at Elie at the printer’s weeks ago, he gets this stupid, bubbly feeling in his stomach and an involuntary smile on his face. 

He’s caught up in these fluttery feelings and Elie just starts typing. It’s kind of a stream of conscious thoughts he wish he could express in French and know that Gaspard would understand, but it’s not. Even if it’s in English it freeing to finally get these thoughts out of his head.

_I don’t know you, but it feels like I do. Or maybe that I could and the idea of not knowing you better would fill me with so much regret I wouldn’t be able to stand it._

God, he’s sounds like an awful poet. 

Elie goes to delete the email, maybe he’ll summon the nerve in the morning and not sound like a deranged stalker. He’s not paying attention and only when the little notification pops up that informs him his message has been sent

“No. No no. Shit. Come on, no, you can’t be fucking serious.”

Elie gets progressively louder and only realizes he’s shouting at his laptop when his neighbor starts banging on the wall and yells an incomprehensible set of what Elie can only assume are unflattering insults at him.

“Pardon,” Elie shouts back.

There’s nothing from his neighbor for a moment, and then loud music, heavy on the bass, starts rattling the window sills. Elie sighs.

He looks at his email inbox, sitting there innocently, and says, more quietly this time, “Fuck.”

Elie imagines Gaspard's face as he reads the email and sinks his face into his hands. He hopes that either Gaspard's English isn't that good or they really are soulmates. That's the only way he can recover from this newest obstacle.

 

.

 

Elie's at a café for lunch only because he forgot to do his grocery shopping earlier in the week, which has left his tiny fridge depressingly empty. It's never all that full to begin with, but its current state is just sad.

He's drinking espresso because he hasn't figured out how to order a regular coffee yet, and too embarrassed to ask the waiter who was an unfortunate stereotype of hating English-speaking tourists butchering his language. Elie's got his tobacco and sheets out in front of him. He didn't use to like rolling his own cigarettes, but Nathalie showed him how during his first week and he's come to enjoy the ritual of it. It's calming in a way.

Elie licks the paper to seal it, twisting the ends to finish his cigarette and starts rifling through his pockets for a light. Of course he doesn't have one. Just his fucking luck. He reaches down for his bag hoping there's a matchbook squirreled away in one of the pockets, knowing he probably doesn't have one. Like always.

"T'as besoin d'un feu?" 

Elie looks up sharply at that voice, half-remembered like some dream, and he's not sure he's not dreaming and pinches his leg just to be sure. It stings like a bitch. Gaspard is actually standing in front of him.

"Oui. Merci," he says, slowly. He leans forward and gently cups his hand around Gaspard's offered lighter, brushing against his fingers. 

Gaspard starts speaking, and it's like the first time they met all over again. Elie's too transfixed by the voice and distracted watching Gaspard's mouth form words to try and parse what the hell he's actually saying. 

"I don't speak French that well," Elie blurts out in English. Gaspard's mouth kind of hangs open in surprise, or at least it looks like surprise, but with hair covering most of his face Elie isn't completely sure. He ducks his head, feeling heat rising up from his neck and probably visible to Gaspard. Gaspard smiles and gestures to the chair next to Elie, who nods.

"My English isn't great, but if you'd like we can talk like this," Gaspard says. "I'm sorry we haven't found time to speak before this." He ducks his head, pushing his bangs off his face. Elie watches them fall back into place, enraptured. "I want to know you," Gaspard says, shyly, looking at Elie through his bangs. 

Elie smiles before looking away quickly. His cheeks still feel hot when he turns back to Gaspard and says, "I really want to know you better too."

"I'm happy for that."

Elie remembers something Marianne said and asks impulsively, "Do you believe in soulmates?"

 

.

 


End file.
